A Caterpillar Named Armageddon
by Archangel1202
Summary: What if the Hungry Caterpillar never got full? What if he never turned into a butterfly? What if, in desperation, he turned to eating human flesh? When this happens, the Caterpillar finds himself in a cycle of eating and killing, which will spread from Earth into the stars themselves.


**Chapter 1**

The very hungry Caterpillar groaned as he devoured the last of the leaf. It was too much food, too much. And yet it wasn't enough. The food hadn't sated the hunger. At best it had put a dent in it. But it was still very much there. Very much present. He'd spent the last god knows how long doing nothing but filling his days and himself with food, and yet it hadn't helped. Were he not so full, he could go on eating forever, it felt like. Carry on forever and never stop. Maybe if he slept for a bit, when he woke up, he might feel better….But no, every time he slept, he felt the hunger pangs, worse than before, and they wrenched his eyes open and drove him to search for food. But surely it was futile. If one apple, two pears, three plums, four strawberries, five oranges, a piece of cake, an ice cream cone and god knows what else had failed to sate his hunger, what could he find that would?

Perhaps he would have continued that way, agony-wracked, hungry yet full, spending his days miserably searching for food, until he finally found some way to die, were it not for one coincidence which changed everything. He was climbing, miserably on a branch that, as far as he could tell, he was the only living creature on, at least of his relative size. That was another thing he had noticed: as he ate, he grew. He'd started out the size of an average Caterpillar, and now he was the size of an incredibly large worm or a very small snake. But he was on his branch, looking for something new to eat, when he heard something he'd never heard before. Some strange sound, fluid and rhythmic, but stopping and starting often. He took the great effort of moving around the branch to see what it was, and saw a strange creature, or what he assumed was a creature. Had he perhaps been more knowledgeable, he would have known it was a human. Ordinarily, he avoided large creatures, especially one as large as this, but something was different today. Maybe it was because he hadn't eaten in at least a day, but there was only one instinct screaming at him now. Food! He tried to tell himself it was ridiculous, that he couldn't eat other creatures, but that instinct had overtaken him. He dropped from the branch, landing on the ground with an audible thud, and then started his way towards the creature. It took him a while to get close, but the creature didn't seem to be moving with any haste, and it kept stopping to point at the surroundings with a strange object, and the Caterpillar was finally able to draw level. He crawled onto the black, strange foot of the creature, and then the creature suddenly moved, and the Caterpillar anticipated death for a second, but then he felt himself lifted into the air, and held at eye level with the creature

"Bloody hell," He would have heard if he'd been able to understand English. "You're a big one, aren't you? I need to get a pic of this." The creature placed the Caterpillar on its shoulder, and proceeded to raise the object up to them, seemingly facing them. It was almost like it was trying to help the Caterpillar. Almost. But the shoulder was a perfect place for what the Caterpillar had in mind. He crawled around, moving up to the creature's neck.

"Smile for the selfie," he might have understood the creature say. But he definitely understood its stiffening as his, having grown faster than the rest of it, sank into his neck and drew blood. The mandibles slashed through skin and muscle, until they found the arteries underneath, and then cut through those as well. By this point, the creature was screaming and thrashing, but the strength appeared to have drained from it, and it collapsed to the ground, bringing the Caterpillar with it. By this point, he was drenched in blood, and it had soaked into the earth surrounding them. Having brought down his prey, the Caterpillar allowed himself a moment of shock. He had just killed another living creature. Killed it when it thought he was harmless. But all the qualms in the world couldn't stop the hunger driving him to survey the creature...his latest meal? It was far bigger than he was. Days of eating, quite possibly. Maybe even a whole weak. For the first time, he could see something that might possibly bring an end to his hunger. Still, he wasn't sure how to go about this. His mandibles could only bite off small chunks at a time, and he didn't know if there was any specific way he should go about it. Deciding to just follow the instincts that were even now screaming at him to stop thinking and just tear at the meat. He crawled over to the seemingly fleshier parts of the creature's arm and tore off a small chunk with his mandibles, which he then nibbled at. However, as soon as he got the taste he began to savage the corpse, tearing at the flesh and swallowing it. It was good, and there was so much of it….

All in all, it took him about a week or so to eat the creature. He was slow at first but, impossible as it seemed, his appetite grew as he did. And with such a supply of food, he grew rapidly. He was now as tall as a dog, and much longer. And how his mandibles had grown. He had been covered in blood, but he'd still had to drink over the seven or eight days, and the water had washed it off. But still, even after so much food, he was ridiculously, agonisingly hungry. Even when he had been eating, it had only been dulled, but once again he was starving. It was stupid, it was impossible and it was unfair, but he was. He needed more food. And so far, these creatures….they were the best thing he'd ever eaten. He needed more of them. But maybe that wouldn't be so hard now. As he grew, he found himself able to travel vastly longer distances far quicker, so ground to cover wasn't an issue. But he hadn't seen any more of those creatures other than this one, so he wasn't sure where he could find them. Still, he'd only find out if he started going.

It turned out his worried for needless. He'd only been travelling for maybe fifteen minutes when he came across two of them. Different from the one he'd killed, smaller, with longer fur. It took them a few seconds to see him, and when they did, one screamed, and the other pulled out an object similar to what the other one had had. It was kept trained on him as he came closer, but then dropped as he leapt and his mandibles flashed.


End file.
